So, aside from the anti-combo theme, the sense this card gives me strongly – in conjunction with the recruit-for-opponent cards – is that we’re going to see exhaustion-type control decks make a comeback.

If you look at this card as a key deck component rather than a tech card, what is it effectively doing? It’s taking a significant tempo loss in exchange for a significant value gain. Because casting a random spell with random targets is usually going to be good for the opponent unless you happen to RNG lucky or get in a situation you know he’s got a spell he doesn’t want to cast, e.g. Twisting Nether when he’s ahead on the board. However, you gain value because casting a spell with random targets at an unexpected time is almost guaranteed to be worse value for the opponent than holding it until he wants to play it.

Same with pulling minions from the opponent’s deck. You give your opponent tempo, but if you survive it, you have the advantage in remaining value in your deck.

Furthermore, you know who’s good at control? Priest. And Priest also has all the hand-peeking abilities, especially this set’s Legendary… those will synergize hugely with this card.

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2 Mana 2/2 with Battlecry: Add a random Mage spell to your hand would be fine on its own. Like a Babbling Book. Any more and it’s great.

Ray of Frost is excellent with this, as is of course Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Whoa, Ray of Frost suddenly looks a whole lot better now doesn’t it? Questing Adventurer Tempo Mage here we goooooooooo…

Depends on the combo. As a tech card against combo decks in the meta, it’s primarily effective against ones that rely heavily on Battlecry.

Not sure that she’ll get much play right away, but there will be five more sets to come before she rotates out, each with – one assumes – one new Paladin secret. So if she doesn’t work right away, they’ll probably try to make her good later.

In the meantime, it’ll be fun when some RNG card or another manages to give Secret Mage or Secret Hunter a copy of her.

Probably the best use of the Twinspell keyword so far. Not very powerful, but makes up for it in flexibility. You can use it to freeze two separate minions on the same turn, the same minion for two consecutive turns, or as a slightly underpowered Frost Bolt if you cast it on the same minion twice. Furthermore, it synergizes nicely with Mana Wyrm (even at the new higher cost), Questing Adventurer, and anything else that might come along that rewards casting many spells or playing many cards.

For instance, you could play a Sorcerer’s Apprentice on Turn 2 when your opponent has a single minion out, follow up with this for 0 cost. Then the following turn, drop a Questing Adventurer and play the Twinspell copy. Then, if the opponent has two minions out, trade the Apprentice for the unfrozen one. Good tempo.

Oh, I just saw Walking Fountain, so there’s also that, and Zilliax, and Al’Akir. A 4/4 copy of any of those for 5 Mana is great.

I think there will be lots of good decks with this… Shaman’s has a lot of good low-cost spells but not many good high-cost ones so it’s natural to build a deck that’s spell-based early game and transitions into minions later. You don’t even need to omit low-cost minions entirely. E.g. if your worst case is you hit Bloodmage Thalnos for a 5-cost 4/4 with +1 Spell Damage and Deathrattle: Draw a card, that’s reasonable value. But as others are saying you mostly want Malygos or some high-cost card with a big end-of-turn or deathrattle ability.

What exactly the alternatives to Malygos will be, we’ll have to wait till we see the whole set, but there will obviously be some.

People are blasting this card because it doesn’t tie in very well with the current Hunter meta and ignoring the fact that it’s extremely high-value on its own, and would be OP if it were for a class that would make better use of the spell damage.

Weapon stats are valued about the same as minion stats, although damage is weighted more highly than durability. So let’s say we count a 2/3 weapon as equivalent to a 2/2 body. That effectively gives her 7/8 in stats for 7, which is standard vanilla… except we’ve also got +2 Spell Damage now. And more to the point, it’s hard-to-remove Spell Damage, since most decks will run either zero or one weapon-removal effects, maybe two at most. A +2 Spell Damage minion will usually be removed on the opponent’s next turn, but here we can almost guarantee that we get to use it three times.

She’s not going to be the lynchpin of any deck, but she’ll be good value in any deck that was planning on including 4-6 (or more) damage dealing spells anyway.

Also, most sets seem to include at least one Hunter spell that deals damage and we haven’t seen one for this set yet, so we can guess one will be revealed later. If it turns out to be multi-target or able to go face, neither of which is unlikely, that will improve this card quite a bit.

I like this card. Good value and some possible interesting but not OP interactions with other cards due to having four keywords (Rush, Deathrattle, Beast, Murloc). These kinds of cards lead to more organic play, and will also be played in both Arena and constructed.

Prediction: At least 25% of the most cancerous decks in the new meta are going to run this. The problem with cards like this is that they’re challenges in the deck design department, but once one person figures out a killer deck, everyone else just copies it, skipping over the fun part. Playing with or against those decks is then usually less fun than ones that deal damage or acquire board control more organically, because you can’t meaningfully interact with the opponent’s hand, only with what they’ve put into play… combo deck vs. combo deck is kinda two-player solitaire.